We'll go last: islanders say they can live with their landmines

Page Tools

Every day, Leon Marsh must drive down a track just the width of
two Land Rovers, picking his way between the landmine fields that
pepper his vast sheep farm in the Falkland Islands.

With 117 minefields covering almost 21 square kilometres, it is
a routine he and his fellow islanders have had to become used to in
the 23 years since the war between Britain and Argentina ended.

But in contrast to communities around the world that are
battling to have their landmines removed, the Falkland Islanders
argue that theirs should be left alone.

Next week, the islanders will back a radical plan by the charity
Landmine Action, which proposes that instead of clearing the
Falklands the British Government remove mines from an equivalent
land area in Angola, Cambodia or Afghanistan, where the lethal
munitions present a daily risk to life. The proposal will be put to
a meeting of the standing committees of the Ottawa Convention in
Geneva next week.

Britain is obliged to clear the Falklands mines by March 2009
under the convention. Promoted by the late Princess Diana, it
requires signatories not only to stop using landmines, but to
remove them from their territory entirely.

But Falkland Islanders have said they would be embarrassed if
the money were spent on clearing their mines when there is a dire
need for it elsewhere.

British sappers cleared 4500 mines - lying on their stomachs
with hand-held prods - straight after the war, but they lost two
men and sustained several casualties. No islanders have died.

At his farm in remote Fox Bay West, Mr Marsh, 42, a
fifth-generation islander, said: "The landmines have become a sort
of way of life. People are under the general opinion that unless
they can guarantee something that will be 100 per cent safe we
shouldn't touch them.

"Since the mines have been here I have only ever known two of my
8000 sheep to get blown up.

Some of the minefields are just a couple of hundred metres from
my settlement, but it's a very difficult process to move them and
if there is any risk to human life it's not worth it."

At the 11,000-hectare farm next door, Norma Edwards has 1620
hectares of landmines, and the skull and crossbones "Danger, mines"
warning signs and fences make it very clear where they lie.

She said: "My own feeling is that there are places in the world
where kids have to walk through minefields and those should be
dealt with before us. I think it would be an excellent plan to have
a sort of landmine swap shop. Put us on the end of the list." Any
suggestion that the islanders believe the landmines would deter
another Argentinian invasion is firmly denied. Ms Edwards said:
"It's nothing to do with the Argentines. The landmines wouldn't
keep them out."

The initiative is the idea of Simon Conway, deputy director of
Landmine Action, who came up with the swap shop scheme after a trip
to the Falklands in February. He explained: "My experience had been
of clearing landmines from under people's houses, in their gardens
and from their ricefields, and with every square metre cleared
there was a massive benefit and we were preventing people from
having accidents.

"In the Falklands it would be technically feasible to clear the
mines, but pointless to spend millions of pounds when the
population showed no enthusiasm for it. That money could be much
better spent in Cambodia or Africa."

His group is anxious to ensure Britain does not shirk its
obligations under the convention, thus setting an example for
poorer countries that might worm their way out of clearing up their
munitions. The idea is that the British would be given a 10-year
extension to the 2009 deadline in return for the exchange, so the
Falklands would have to be tackled by 2019.

A spokesman for the British Foreign Office said it was aware of
the Falklands initiative and a feasibility study was being done to
"evaluate the options available".